Hidden Risk in Chiefs Signing Kenneth Walker

A younger Super Bowl MVP backfield

The Chiefs have another backfield filled with Super Bowl MVPs. This time, they’re much younger.

Three-time Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes is 30 and Kenneth Walker is 25. Imagine how much more those two former Super Bowl MVPs can do before they stop playing together for the Chiefs. Montana and Allen ended their time together after the Chiefs bowed out in the 1994 wild-card playoffs.

Mahomes and Walker will become only the seventh combination of Super Bowl MVPs to play together without achieving that honor for the same franchise, according to Elias Sports Bureau.

In addition to Montana and Allen, the list includes Richard Dent and Jerry Rice with the 49ers (1994), Desmond Howard and Larry Brown with the Raiders (1997), Emmitt Smith and Dexter Jackson with the Cardinals (2003), Von Miller and Joe Flacco with the Broncos (2019) and Nick Foles and Malcolm Smith with the Jaguars (2019).

But Kansas City’s dream team could be too fantasy to be true. There’s a significant risk to signing Walker, and it’s more than his pre-2025 injury history. It’s simply history.

Super Bowl MVPs with new teams

Whether science or simply coincidence, Super Bowl MVPs who immediately join new teams haven’t seen much of the postseason over the remainder of their careers. There’ve been three.

Walker is the first to earn Super Bowl MVP and immediately change teams since Dexter Jackson (Super Bowl 37 MVP with Tampa Bay). Jackson signed with the Cardinals as an unrestricted free agent in 2003, a month after leading the Buccaneers to their first title. He followed Desmond Howard (Super Bowl 31 with Green Bay, then signed with the Raiders in 1997) and Larry Brown (Super Bowl 30 with Dallas, then also signed with the Raiders in 1996).

Jackson is the only player in that trio to return to the playoffs (just one game) over the rest of his career, and he didn’t do it with the team that signed him after the Super Bowl. After helping the Buccaneers win the big game in 2002, he signed a five-year deal with Arizona and immediately registered six interceptions.

Arizona, however, cut him midway through his second season with the team. Tampa Bay re-signed him and he played just one more playoff game, with the Bucs in 2005.

The Chiefs obviously aren’t the 2003 Cardinals or the Raiders of 30 years ago. But the year before Arizona signed Jackson, the Cardinals were 5-11 (the Chiefs finished 6-11 in 2025). And like the Chiefs of last season, the Raiders were coming off next-to-last-place finishes in the AFC West.